Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I predicted before the last American Presidential election that Bush would have to reduce the price of gasoline or he would lose. He didn’t force the price of gasoline down and, of course, he did lose. He ‘won’ only because of electoral crookedness (which appears to be the strategy for the upcoming election cycle in November). There is only so far that you can rig the computer voting machines before everybody notices and the hue and cry for reform removes the crooked machines permanently, thus making it difficult for Giuliani to win the next Presidential election, so Rove has apparently decided it will be necessary to temporarily reduce the price of gas until the elections are over. We are seeing this now at the pumps (stock up before November!). You might think this would be tricky to do, but the way that commodities are priced makes it surprisingly easy to manipulate the price of gas. Undernews quotes the goldbug site Le Metropole Cafe:

“In yesterday's WSJ in Section C there is a very, very interesting item in the article, Some Investors Lose Their Zest For Commodities. The article notes that over that past few months, commodity funds have been liquidating commodity holdings. But here's the stunner: ‘Consider the Goldman Sachs commodity index, one of the most popular vehicles for betting on raw materials. In July, Goldman Sachs tweaked the index's content by cutting its exposure to gasoline. Investors tracking the index had to adjust their portfolios accordingly ‘which sent gasoline futures prices tumbling.’

Prior to Goldman's July GSCI revision, unleaded gas accounted for 8.45% of the GSCI. Now unleaded gas is only 2.30%. This means commodity funds had to sell 73% of its gasoline futures to conform to the reformulated GSCI. . .

Here we have Goldman, qua keeper of the commodities index, manipulating markets simply by adjusting index components. It is noteworthy in several respects. First, we are used to the notion of them front running market sensitive information announced by third parties, but here a glorified hedge fund - albeit one dominating central banks and finance ministries worldwide - maintains market-moving indices itself. . . . Second, it lends credence to the theory that the current well-publicized commodities decline is just a well-timed, well-orchestrated head fake to benefit the incumbents in the run up to the midterm elections - someone noted recently that Bush's ratings vary inversely with gas prices. . .”

As Undernews notes in its headline, the American Treasury Secretary moved to his current job directly from being Chairman and CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group. He took a $38 million pay cut to change jobs. John Bolton was instrumental in convincing him to do so. He replaced John Snow, who committed the unpardonable sin of being more interested in the health of the American economy than being completely loyal to the Bush regime.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

You can get anthrax from bullshit, and the FBI is now proving you can get bullshit from anthrax. They haveannounced that the anthrax samples from the 2001 attacks were in fact not weaponized grade from a military biolab, but just garden-variety anthrax which could have been made by any careful expert with the proper equipment. Douglas J. Beecher, a scientist in the FBI laboratory's Hazardous Materials Response Unit, and a man whom the FBI would not allow to be interviewed, wrote:

“A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapons production.”

Of course, it was the FBI itself which widely circulated this ‘misconception’. Just how stupid do they think we are? They could have, and did, determine the quality of anthrax at the time. This 180 degree change of story, coupled with the obviously intentionally bungled investigation of the attacks (mostly centered on their persecution of patsy Steven Hatfill), simply confirms that they are protecting highly-placed interests in the American military.

The timing of this announcement is curious. The anthrax attacks aren’t a live issue in American politics. You have to wonder if they are preparing for another attack, and feel the need to preemptively clear the American military by cleaning up lingering pointers to the real culprit from the last set of attacks.

As part of the never-ending pattern, yetanotherIsraeli national, another young male in a van, has been caught surveilling a possible terrorist target, and, needless to say, quickly released (had it been an American citizen who happened to be Muslim, he would have been in jail for months, if not forever). This time it was the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore. Police actually had to chase him to apprehend him (and he did not immediately produce his international license, as if he was hoping not to have to blow his identity), and found a laptop computer and a digital camera, but, unusual for an Israeli van (are vans required equipment for Israeli spies?), no evidence of explosives. He went through the tunnel at least twice, as the person who reported him to the police saw him going through the tunnel and again as he returned in the opposite direction back towards the tunnel (his efforts at photography must have been obvious to have attracted the attention of the witness). Although he said he was visiting friends in the Washington area, the van had Connecticut license plates (the owner confirmed he was authorized to use the van). There is no indication that there was any investigation of the owner of the van or his ‘friends’ near Washington. He was released after the local police had talked to “all the appropriate agencies” about him, when they no doubt received the orders from on high to let him go.

Monday, September 25, 2006

CaterpillarInc.is working on robotic machinery, a development which will no doubt cause a great deal of joy in Israel. Israelis will soon be able to crush peace activists, or knock down walls on top of grandmothers, all with the luxury of remote control.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

The latest fun out of Spain concerning the Madrid bombings is a right-wing conspiracy theory from one of the accused, a Spaniard named Jose Emilio Suarez, who allegedly supplied much of the explosive material. He is now saying the attack was actually a Socialist coup d’etat. Apparently the Socialists knew that the Conservatives would attempt to exploit the attacks as a political tactic, and, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, persist in blaming it on the ETA, and appear to be more concerned with winning the election using the ‘war on terror’ trick than actually protecting the Spanish people, thus angering the Spanish voters and sweeping the Socialists to victory. I just wish the socialists around here were half as smart.

Jose Emilio Suarez is one in a longline of police informants who have played major roles in the most notable conspiracies of the past fifty years.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Here is some rare common sense, a comment by Martin Woollacott, on the prospects for war with Iran. We are yet again in a period where everyone is screaming that an attack in Iran is imminent. What nonsense! I can’t comment on Israel, as Israeli sanity has been put into severe question by its recent Lebanon adventure, but, as I have been repeating for months as we pass each successive deadline that pundits predict as the certain date of the American attack on Iran, there is absolutely no chance that the United States will attack Iran, for the same reasons as always. Iran is geographically located such that it can block much of the world’s oil, causing a catastrophic rise in prices, and a massive world recession. Iran can also cause huge amounts of retaliatory mischief, in Iraq, the Middle East, and around the world. There is no prospect of removing the current Iranian leadership, which will only be strengthened by an attempt to do so. Any attack on Iran is simply not possible.

This is such a serious issue that the unthinkable, that the United States might stand up and stop Israel from an attack, even using military means to do so, is possible. The ‘Establishment’ – you know, the shadowy group that Chomsky circularly claims is responsible for all the evil in the world, including that evil done by Israel and its American agents in the Bush Administration – will wake up and save itself. We have seen a small amount of evidence of that awakening during the attack on Lebanon, where Rice was sent to talk Establishment common sense with the Israelis. Israel’s answer was to bomb Qana, a slap in the face to Rice and the Establishment which will not be forgotten (and which was immediately regretted in Israel, which explains much of the systematic lying over Qana).

If any attack were to take place, the usual Zionist gatekeepers like Chomsky and Zune won’t be able to hide the truth any longer: everybody will know who was behind it. We will enter the Golden Age of Anti-Semitism. With hundreds of thousands – even millions – of people newly laid off in the United States, you’ll be able to go into American gun shops and buy ammo specifically made for Jew hunting. It won’t be pretty. Fortunately for everybody, the chances of an attack on Iran by anybody are close to zero.

I know those warning about war mean well, but there is a serious danger that unnecessary alarm plays into the hands of the neocons. The constant talk of war follows along the neocon class of civilizations road, and makes it even more difficult to deal with the Iranians, and the entire Middle East, in a reasonable manner. Just like with Iraq, the neocon plan is to keep the drums of war beating, and then hope for a spot of good luck – and sometimes, as with September 11, you make your own luck! – to trick the American people into doing something stupid.

John Mark Karr is being offered a plea agreement of probation for his alleged possession of child pron as the local sheriff’s department ‘lost’ the evidence, Karr’s computer. I could see this coming. Authorities were vague about the nature of the photographs, as if they weren’t really sure that there was anything illegal about them. Sonoma County officials were no doubt embarrassed by the ‘help’ they received from Boulder, which tried to relieve its embarrassment by pawning him off on Sonoma County (“well, at least we dragged him back from Thailand for something”). The bottom line is that we have not the slightest evidence that Karr was even a pedophile. Weird maybe, but in no way a criminal.

Lawrence of Cyberia commemorates the death of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, assassinated by the Zionists of the Stern Gang – with the approval of future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, still alive but quite demented – on September 17, 1948, the day after he submitted a progress report to the United Nations advocating, amongst other things, the Palestinian right of return. The new State of Israel went through the motions of investigating the crime, but, needless to say, not one person was ever charged with the murder (although efforts were made to wind up the Stern Gang). Count Bernadotte had saved a considerable number of Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War, which should tell us something about the nature of Zionism.

The presence of Israelis in Iraqi Kurdistan, first revealed by Seymour Hersh, has now been confirmed by the BBC. The Israelis have been giving military training to the Kurds, as part of the Yinon plan to break Iraq up into small parts by forcing a violent secession of Kurdistan. The wildest conspiracy theory has now becoming mainstream. Check this out from the BBC report:

“The BBC report will be like the smoking gun the Arab media has spent years looking for.

Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq began over three years ago, Arab journalists have been speaking of Israelis operating inside the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

They said this was evidence that toppling Saddam Hussein was only the first chapter in a wider American-Israeli conspiracy to eliminate threats to their strategic interests and re-draw the map of the Middle East.

Syria and Iran, which have common borders with Kurdish areas, are believed to be the primary target.”

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Read thesetwo amazing articles by William Arkin on how Israel’s attack on Lebanon was moral and Lebanese attempts to defend itself were immoral (each one chock-a-block with easily demonstrable lies, although the second one is a slight attempt to mitigate the outrageousness of the first), and then read this article on cluster bombs by Patrick Cockburn. Then answer the following skill-testing question: William Arkin is:

a liar;

out of his mind;

a Zionist; or

all of the above.

Arkin used to have a bit of a reputation for credibility, but has decided to throw it all away for Zionism. You never get your reputation back. Pity. The only thing you can do about people like this is to simply stop reading them. If he is prepared to lie like this when the lies are so obvious, how can you trust anything he writes?

jews sans frontieres refers to a rare moment of sense on proposed intervention in Sudan, an article by Jonathan Steele, and makes the connection of the campaign against Sudan to International Zionism (see my earlier posting). I can predict, with one hundred percent certainty, that any Western involvement in Sudan, other than sending food and medical aid, will result in all the people of Sudan being much worse off. Much worse off. One hundred percent certainty. In a world with interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, how can anybody even consider the nonsense of doing the same thing to yet another country?

The complicity (or worse) of Canada in the campaign of violence against the people of Haiti is particularly striking when you consider that the current Governor General of Canada is Haitian. Although the Canadian role in murdering innocent civilians in Afghanistan is big news in Canada, Haiti has fallen completely beneath the radar. Some of the deep political background can be found here and here and here and here. It is still possible in Canada to scare politicians into doing the right thing (Pierre Pettigrew, the Liberal minister behind Canada’s position on Haiti and a guy who has an interesting history with one of the authors of the first article cited in this posting, lost his seat in the last election due to his attacks against the people of Haiti, yet another example of how ‘first past the post’ works and why there is so much pressure to scrap it in favor of anti-democratic alternatives). There are protestsites against Canada’s immoral role in Haiti.

Monday, September 18, 2006

If we accept the fact that the American military had to be behind the September 11 attacks, at least to the extent of arranging not to shoot down any of the attacking planes, we have to assume that somebody associated with the Pentagon was involved in the creation of the conspiracy. The planning of American conspiracies tends to be meticulous, with the problems arising in the execution of the plans (the kind of people you have to hire to do these things aren’t good at following orders). Conspiracy planners have two issues:

Create a plan that will accomplish the goals of the conspirators; and

Don’t get caught.

In this case, the goal was to create a casus belli for a series of wars which would benefit the Pentagon generals (who thrive in wartime), materially benefit the military-industrial complex, ensure the reelection of Republicans, involve the United States in Netanyahu’s Zionist trick called the ‘war on terror’, and satisfy the strategic goals of the extreme Israeli right and its traitorous agents in the American government (in particular, to fulfill Wurmser’s Zionist Plan for the Middle East). Such an ambitious project required a significant apparent attack on the symbols of power of the American Empire, in order to create the psychological climate of fear and rage which would allow the American public to be bamboozled into consenting to their government taking actions that were clearly against the interests of the United States. To create the preconditions for war, it was decided to attack the World Trade Center, as a symbol of American economic power, and the Pentagon, as a symbol of American military power.

Attacking the WTC would have been enough had the planners been able to predict that the towers would have come crashing down. Unfortunately, there was no way to know if the planes would cause the collapse of the towers, or merely cause a couple hundred deaths on the floors where the planes hit. There was a perfectly good reason to arrange to use explosives to bring down the towers, as that would guarantee that there was enough damage to lead to the long-term plans of the conspirators. In fact, the uncertainty over the fate of the towers probably lead to the necessity of staging an attack against the Pentagon, merely to ensure that at the end of the day there was enough physical and human damage to bear the weight of all the war plans. Using explosives in the towers was impossible due to the fact that tons of explosives would have had to be planted in hundreds of places in a fully-occupied building (the one guy who nobody has ever heard of who claims the power to a tower was shut down over the weekend – anyone who has ever worked in such a building knows that the power is never completely shut down as the tenants of such buildings are paying for functional access 24/7, 365 days of the year – is not even worth responding to, but the fact somebody has concocted this lie shows that the controlled demolition buffs feel the need to explain how the explosives were planted). On top of that, the perfection required in the setting off of the charges could not be guaranteed in buildings which had suffered damage after being hit by airplanes. It would have been a disaster to the conspirators if a tower had remained standing full of explosive charges ready to be discovered by fire investigators. Planting charges is a gross breach of the second conspiracy planner’s issue, don’t get caught, and no meticulous planner would even consider taking such a risk.

The attack on the Pentagon would have been handled in the same careful way, ensuring that the goals of the conspirators were met while minimizing the risk to the conspirators. In the case of an attack on the Pentagon, the risk was two-fold: don’t get caught, and don’t get killed. We can respond to some questions raised by conspiracy critics. Diana Johnstone writes:

“But the real argument against the Pentagon hypothesis is that it makes no sense politically or practically. Why get rid of an entire airliner full of people, in order to make way for a missile to do the job attributed to the airliner? What is the point? I suppose somebody can come up with an answer, but does it make any sense? An airliner couldn't hit the Pentagon, so a missile was required? But the Pentagon is a very large target, visible in an open space. It is sturdier than the Twin Towers, having been built to withstand military attack, so destroying it was harder, but hitting it was not such an extraordinary feat.”

“This 'no plane' nonsense is a government disinfo plant. Every media attack on those who doubt the official 9-11 story inevitably uses this hoax to make the 9-11 truth movement look silly.

The claim that there was no plane at the Pentagon makes no sense. If the 9-11 perps have to get rid of the plane and passengers anyway, why not crash them into the Pentagon? Why add complexity to an already complex issue to save the plane and passengers when you have to get rid of them afterwards anyway?

Why would the 9-11 perps even bother with such a hoax to substitute some other aircraft for the passenger jet, then have to destroy the passenger jet and the passengers somewhere else, THEN get rid of that wreckage so it would never be found?

Finally, hundreds of witnesses saw the passenger jet flying towards the Pentagon. Not one person reported seeing it flying away, and with the WTC already destroyed everyone was very sensitive to nearby aircraft. People were looking very carefully at anything with wings. Hundreds saw the passenger jet head towards the Pentagon. None saw it fly away. What do the ‘Pod people’ imagine, that Mr. Spock beamed the passenger jet up to the Enterprise at the last second?

The 'no plane' theory does not make any sense. It never has. It exists solely to give the mainstream media an easy-to-use handle to ridicule those who doubt the official story."

Leaving aside the rather obvious point that these arguments beg the question by assuming that there was an airliner attack, and the point that the Pentagon, with unlimited resources, would not have the slightest problem with disposing of an airplane, we can answer the questions by thinking like a conspiracy planner. Why use a missile or explosives rather than Flight 77? It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Pentagon was full of generals, not to mention Donald Rumsfeld. The attack was meant to be symbolic, not real. Only one general, Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude, died. Hani Hanjour, on all accounts a complete goofball and a guy whose last known flying lesson had to be taken with the instructors in the plane, a single-engine Cessna, because they didn’t feel he was competent enough in flying to trust him to take the plane up by himself, was supposed to make a 270 degree flight all around the Pentagon, missing the four sides with generals in them, and hitting the farthest side which was being renovated. What if he had flubbed the hardest part for the pilot, which was bringing the plane down, overshot the wall, and hit the other side of the building. No conspiracy planner could possibly take that risk. Thus the necessity for alternate arrangements, and the complete lack of any evidence that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

Eyewitness testimony, particularly eyewitness testimony that has been prepped by being immersed in the Official Story of what happened (not to mention eyewitnesses that have been salted with ringers who parrot the Official Story), is useless, a fact that has been consistently proven when the issue is studied by psychologists. Nobody was ready for this, nobody had ever seen anything like it, it literally happened in a flash, and everybody knew what was supposed to have happened before they were questioned. I’m amazed that any credibility is put in this testimony at all. In these circumstances, the only credible eyewitness testimony is from those brave souls who dare come up with something other than the Official Story.

If you believe the Pentagon was involved in the conspiracy based on the fact that the Pentagon stood the planes down, you have to follow through on the logic and think like a Pentagon conspiracy planner. A Pentagon conspiracy planner wouldn’t take the risk of planting explosives in the towers because he couldn’t take the risk of being caught. The uncertainty whether the towers would fall, and thus the uncertainty whether the attack would cause enough damage to lead to the Pentagon’s plans, meant that a staged attack on the Pentagon was required. The fact that the Pentagon was full of generals meant that an attack by Flight 77 was too dangerous, and something more under the control of the conspirators was required. Just as profilers solve crimes by getting in the mind of the criminals, you have to think like a conspiracy planner in order to understand the conspiracy.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

“. . . tales of Jewish piracy, which stretch back thousands of years, aren't in the public's consciousness, and Hollywood even has been known to remove a pirate's Jewish background. As a result, we're stuck with portrayals of pirates as wayward English seamen on a murderous rampage.

But now a forthcoming book hopes to change that image by focusing on Ladino-speaking Jews whose piracy grew out of the Inquisition. ‘The Jewish pirates were Sephardic. Once they were kicked out of Spain [in 1492], the more adventurous Jews went to the New World,’ said Ed Kritzler, whose yet-untitled book on Jewish pirates will be published by Doubleday in spring 2007.”

and (my emphasis in red):

“While some Jews, like Samuel Pallache, took up piracy in part to help make a better life for expelled Spanish Jews, Kritzler said others were motivated by revenge for the Inquisition.

One such pirate was Moses Cohen Henriques, who helped plan one of history's largest heists against Spain. In 1628, Henriques set sail with Dutch West India Co. Admiral Piet Hein, whose own hatred of Spain was fueled by four years spent as a galley slave aboard a Spanish ship. Henriques and Hein boarded Spanish ships off Cuba and seized shipments of New World gold and silver worth in today's dollars about the same as Disney's total box office for ‘Dead Man's Chest.’”

Should we be looking at the Washington neocons as pirates, motivated by real and imagined injustices against the Jewish people, and thus completely unconcerned about issues of morality towards their many victims? The necessity to conceal their murderous revenge fantasies would also explain why various gatekeepers such as Chomsky find it necessary to hide the neocon crimes behind supposed motives of the ‘Establishment’.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Via Lenin’s Tomb, which found it via a Patrick Cockburn column (found here or here), Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on being taken to task because his attack on Lebanon was a ‘complete failure’, responded to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee with a rather stunning admission (my emphasis):

“What did you think, that there would be a war and nothing would happen to our soldiers? The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"

Needless to say, it is anti-Semitic to suggest that one of the goals of the attack was to destroy Lebanon, and therefore I suppose anti-Semitic to quote the admission of the Prime Minister of Israel that the entire attack was a success because half of a non-threatening sovereign nation was destroyed.

The Israelis are actually ranking American Presidential candidates to determine which one would be the best for Israel. I can therefore predict with a great deal of certainty who the next American president will be. Ladies and Gentlemen, the next President of the United States, RudyGiuliani (of course, you have to prove your loyalty before they let you run the United States). If you have any doubts, just remember:

In the United States, Israel usually gets what it wants.

The Christian Zionists control all the computer voting machines.

It is notable that all the potential plausible candidates are ridiculously slavish to the far right in Israel.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Ramzy Baroud raises questions about the kidnapping of the two Fox journalists in Gaza (although he has the names of both of them wrong: they are Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig). The shadowy and hitherto unknown group which took responsibility for the incident, the over-the-top demandfor the release of all Muslims imprisoned by the U.S. (hardly the most pressing issue in Gaza!), and the bizarre forced ‘conversion’ to Islam, all stand out. It is notable that the journalists involved, although employees of Fox, were real journalists sympathetic to the Palestinians, who attempted non-propaganda reporting in Gaza, unheard of for Fox (this follows the examples we’ve seen in Iraq, where the Western kidnap victims are almost always obviously friendly to the Iraqi people). They were originally handcuffed using plastic ties, which sounds like something used by a professional police or military force, not a rag-tag unknown insurgent group.

The conversion angle is guaranteed to make right-wing American Christians angry, and is paralleled by the recent tape of fake al Qaeda Adam Gadahn, who, with all the outrages against Islam he could have discussed, decided to focus on conversion of Christians to Islam. The Zionists seem to have picked conversion as the hot button to push to keep the Christian Zionists on the reservation. I’ve been listening to the shortwave radio, and note that a lot of the Christian Zionists are phoning talk shows reporting themselves ‘confused’ on what happened in Lebanon, as Biblical prophesy tells them that Israel can never lose. Manipulating Christian Zionists to support Israeli colonialism is a tricky business, like trying to herd cats.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Postman Patel excerpts a part from the DEA report on the pre-9–11 actions of the Israeli spy ring, showing how members of the Dallas cell purported to be connected to an Israeli firm named Retalix, which makes product scanners for retail outlets. Postman Patel notes that Retalix is working with a company called PayBy Touch to develop biometrics to replace cash and credit cards for retail payments. If Retalix was a willing front for Israeli spying (of course, it might have been unaware that the spies were using its name, but you have to wonder why they chose that particular name, and whether Retalix would have vouched for them), we have to be open to the fact that once biometics is fully in place for retail payments, the Mossad could have access to all information on such payments, with the accompanying possibilities for blackmail and other shenanigans (including financing itself by lifting money from bank accounts).

It is interesting how often Israeli firms connected with security come up when we dig even a little into the story of September 11. In fact, it appears that all the security connected with September 11 was being run by firms connected with Israel. It must be a coincidence.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

David Corn regurgitates the official CIA position on the importance of Plame, and the blogs fall into line because they have decided they like the CIA over the Bush Administration in the ongoing CIA/Cheney turf war being played out over the Plame matter. Corn has written a biography of Ted Shackley, with the assistance of the CIA and Shackley himself. However much he denies it, it is impossible that Corn was allowed this access unless he was/is an asset (the media asset problem is huge, and you have to wonder whether Cooper’s surprisingly negative coverage of the Bush response to Katrina was just another part of the turf war). Corn’s new book – written with no less than freakin’ Michael Isikoff! – follows the same CIA path. Believe him if you want – I wouldn’t, and Corn is definitely no friend of truthseekers – but the nature of his attack on the Bush Administration will convince nobody except those already convinced.

I note that Corn doesn’t deal with the allegation that Plame’s cover had already been blown at the time the Bush Administration started to throw her name around. Even if he disputes this, he has an obligation to deal with it (I haven’t read the book, and can’t comment on whether he deals with this important issue there).

Don’t believe any poles you read about public support for Israel. They are jobbed. An e-mailer justifiably chided me for not dealing with the Hasbara, the international conspiracy to fool us about Israel and Zionism.

From an article – one in the inevitable series in the MSM - in Time on September 11 conspiracy theories (I don’t know what happened to the missing ‘)’!):

“But there's a big problem with Loose Change and with most other conspiracy theories. The more you think about them, the more you realize how much they depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis or documentation, quotes taken out of context and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses. (For what it's worth, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a fact sheet responding to some of the conspiracy theorists' ideas on its website, www.nist.gov. The theories prompt small, reasonable questions that demand answers that are just too large and unreasonable to swallow. Granted, the Pentagon crash site looks odd in photographs. But if the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile, then what happened to American Airlines Flight 77? Where did all the real, documented people on it go? Assassinated? Relocated? What about eyewitnesses who saw a plane, not a missile? And what are the chances that an operation of such size – it would surely have involved hundreds of military and civilian personnel – could be carried out without a single leak? Without leaving behind a single piece of evidence hard enough to stand up to scrutiny in a court? People, the feds just aren't that slick. Nobody is.”

Note the trick: NIST deals extensively with the attack on the two towers. It only mentions the Pentagon attack in passing. Reading Time, you’d assume that NIST had refuted all the good questions raised in the paragraph. That is not true. NIST demolishes the controlled demolition theory of the WTC, but is too smart to touch the real issues, the Pentagon and WTC7.

By the way, why is it such a big issue with Pentagon conspiracy debunkers that we can’t explain what happened to the plane? We’re supposed to believe on some accounts of the WTC collapse that they planted tons of explosives in hundreds of places in a fully occupied building, but the conspirators are supposed to be stumped in getting rid of one airplane?

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

This National Institute of Standards and Technology “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions” on the WTC collapses (found via Cryptome) is excellent, all the way from explaining why thermite didn’t do it, to dealing with the melting steel and rate of collapse errors, to parrying the real mystery of WTC 7.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Amira Hass writes about the see-no-evil attitude of the average Israeli. It is difficult to avoid the comparison with the German people during the Nazi period (I’m still not using the H-word except to refer to what is going on today), but the comparison is obscene. Germans lived during a period of almost total press censorship, and in a violent police state where even asking questions might result in death. It is fair to say that many if not most Germans really were unaware of the details of what was going on, although it is more difficult to excuse them for being unaware that something evil was happening. On the other hand, Israelis are completely aware of every detail of what the state of Israel is doing in their name, and their complete silence is proof of complicity.

The usual suspects will immediately jump in to claim that Israel can’t be compared to Nazi Germany. Really? The IDF dropped 90%of the cluster bombs that now litter Lebanon during the last 72 hours of the Israeli attack, at a time when the Israeli government knew that a ceasefire was imminent. These bombs were thus clearly intended to be left for Lebanese civilians. The Nazis did some awful stuff, but it is completely fair to day they did no worse than this. Israeli misuse of cluster bombs was so notorious that the State Department actuallydelayedsending (or here) the latest American model of cluster bomb to Israel for fear that it would be used against civilians. The IDF apparently – there is some question whether these bombs were delivered anyway – had to make do with the American cluster bombs it already had on hand. Given the immense power of the Lobby, as again conclusively demonstrated in the last month, somebody in the State Department has large ones. To turn down an Israeli request for arms is almost unheard of, the last time being as a result of Israeli misuse of cluster bombs against civilians in Lebanon in 1982. Needless to say, the average Israeli, not to mention the average North American Jew, will simply dismiss such complaints as anti-Semitism.